GREENFIELD — Students from Northfield Mount Hermon School came together with members of the environmental advocacy organization Greening Greenfield on Sunday afternoon to rally in support of “An Act Establishing a Climate Change Superfund” (H.1014/S.588), also known as the Climate Change Superfund Bill.
Roughly 20 protesters carrying signs and shouting chants, such as “Make polluters pay” or “They’ve known for decades about pollution … time they pay for the solution,” made their way from the Greenfield Public Library to the intersection of Main Street, Federal Street and Bank Row, where they spread out to the four corners and continued their chants as vehicles passed by.
“This was one of the bills that we tried to lobby last year at the State House in Boston and it’s one of the bills that didn’t fully get passed,” said Charlotte Relyea-Strawn, a member of NMH’s Ecoleader group who was leading the student activists. “Counties across Massachusetts have come together last weekend, this week, to lobby for this bill. Hopefully, if we can get the towns involved, then the bill will be passed.”
In August, the Greenfield City Council passed a resolution supporting the bill, with nine votes in favor. Precinct 7 Councilor William “Wid” Perry abstained, and Precinct 9 Councilor Derek Helie and Precinct 3 Councilor Michael Mastrototaro voted against it.
The bill, if passed, would require oil and gas companies to contribute to a Climate Change Superfund in amounts proportional to their share of fossil fuel emissions, as determined by the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. This funding would then be used to pay for projects that mitigate the negative impacts of climate change.
The bill also stipulates that 40% of the funds raised through the legislation go toward projects benefiting Environmental Justice communities. Similar to the Massachusetts bill, New York and Vermont passed “Climate Change Superfund acts” in 2024, which require major fossil fuel producers to put billions of dollars into climate response funds.
Both Relyea-Strawn and NMH student Seneca Smith work with the Massachusetts Youth Climate Coalition to rally for environmental justice policies on the local and state levels.
“The education for young people about these issues just isn’t happening. There’s a climate education bill that we’re trying to advocate for and then there’s the [Climate Change Superfund] Bill,” Smith said. “These companies are the main group of people that are harming the planet, they’re profiting off it and that’s what we’re directly against. … It’s really about connection. It took a lot of work to even get this amount of people to come, and on a larger scale, it can even make a larger impact. It’s really about bringing people together to advocate against the billionaires who are profiting from this.”
On the corner of Main and Federal streets, a group of older adults from Greening Greenfield joined the young activists in a show of support for the bill.
Greening Greenfield member Amy Meblin, explaining her support for the bill, noted that after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the oil company, BP, was fined more than $20 billion for cleanup efforts. She said similarly, companies that pollute the air on a day-to-day basis should also pay for cleanup.
“For a corporation like that, that’s the cost of doing business, right? I mean, they have an insurance policy and they can just pay so they’re not held liable,” Meblin said. “My feeling is that the people who were responsible for polluting our environment — and I think this still applies today — should be not just paying, but doing community service to clean up their mess.”
The Climate Change Superfund Bill is awaiting approval from the state’s Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources.
